A downloadable Modular Game

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Funding Now!

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   "...The day neared its end. Tiger, Monkey, Bear, Crane and Deer where tired after their long hike through the deep forest in the mountains. You felt you were getting close to the Sanctuary of the Snake and decided to camp for the night. The night was unusually cold and only your comforting stories around your campfire could warm you. The hexagram told you your task was more serious than the Grand Chancellor had let you to believe, when they sent you to retrieve the shimmering pearl from the snake. But you made it this far, you had no reason to turn around now.

...

     The morning greeted you with the gentle dew of the mountain valleys and the bright song of the early birds. You rose refreshed from your rest, ready to face your challenge!

     But an unease from the omen of the yarrow stalks made you cautious as you approach the Sanctuary of the Snake...

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5 Fists is different!

5 Fists takes the idea of a classic RPG and turns it on its head:
     There are no classes, no Hit Points, no XP! There's not even a GM!
Instead,  each character is defined by their Weapon of Choice:
     Rope Dart, Spear, Sword, Dagger Axe & Crossbow!

5 Fists follows up to 5 Heroes on a quest through a 5 Room Dungeon with everything you love from classical RPGs and dungeon crawls like puzzles and traps, but without the tedious bookkeeping.  5 Fists also puts away the classic stat block and replaces it with descriptors based on your fighting style.

5 Fists is Binary

When we say binary, we are talking about mechanics. 5 Fists builds on the idea of a Coin Toss, but if you love the feeling of dice in your hand, you can just pick up you favorite dice and assign odd and even numbers to success or failure.

5 Fist is Queer

We decided to go with Animals as characters for the 5 different Weapon Archetypes, because we are aware of the burden any fantasy role already has to carry.  You get to decide the role You want to play, and that includes your characters gender identity! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise!

5 Fists is Jamming

5 Fists is going to be part of the Pleasure-not-Buisiness-Card RPG Jam, the Try Folds Jam and the Five Powers Jam #2.

5 Fists is Sensitive

5 Fists is not only based on philosophy, but also on cultural material that is not our own. This is why we asked people from this culture about how we handled the material. But just because our sensitivity readers gave us their thumbs up, doesn't mean everything is done: Sensitivity Reading is an ongoing process and if you feel we handled your cultural material not right, please contact us.

5 Fists is Funding

To get an alternative cover for 5 Fists, we decided to get this fundraiser going. But why stop with just an alternative cover? Wouldn't it be great to support different amazing artists and get an extra booklet with cool artwork, just because you believe in this project? That's exactly what we thought! So here's the deal:

  • Get 5 Fists through the sale page
  • The initial goal is $300
  • After that, each $100 will open up a slot to commission art

We scratched this part here: For transparency, these are not $300 that go directly to the artist, because from all your purchases, different entities take a bite out of the cake - Itch, taxes, payment service providers. But I will be able to have funds to pay artists their rate.

We scratched it, because we will compensate the bites third parties take out of the cake. We are more excited to get art commissioned than trying to figure out what lands on my plate.

What will happen if we don't reach our Goal?

Glad you asked! We will figure out to get some artwork based on the funds we have. This means we will look for simple pieces from different artists and will try to create a fun booklet with different art work this way!


Purchase

Buy Now$5.55 USD or more

In order to download this Modular Game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $5.55 USD. You will get access to the following files:

5 Fists Story Booklet and Map.pdf 14 MB
5 Fists Rules Booklet.pdf 895 kB
5 Fists Cards.pdf 400 kB
Authors Note.pdf 33 kB

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Community Copies!

We believe in Community Copies: Money should never be standing between you and a great game!

Development log

Comments

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5 Fists is a coin-based mini rpg.

It's a couple pages long, split across a few different pamphlets. The core rules fit on a single page---although you do have to rotate the PDF to read them---and the fonts are very readable.

Mechanically, things are pretty simple. You flip a coin for skill checks. If you have an advantage, you flip two coins. One heads is a success. Double heads is a crit. You don't take damage, but failing to stop an incoming attack can take you out of a fight until you get healed. There's also an elemental weakness system where different characters have different elemental affinities that can give them bonus coins when they clash.

That all said, some of these rules do require a bit of interpreting. It's not clear in the text whether heads and tails cancel each other out, how you know which character has which elemental affinity, and what inspiration coins are.

For GM resources, there's a story seed that sets the stage for an initial encounter, but it's very open-ended and you'll need to fill in a lot of the context yourself. There's also some recommendations for safety tools.

Overall, if you're looking for a very lightweight, martial arts flavored trpg system, 5 Fists is worth a look. You'll need to do some legwork in setting up the scenario and interpreting the rules, but this is also a game that you can read once and then be able to run it without ever looking at the book again. As long as you have a few coins in your pocket, it might be perfect for car rides, camping trips, and other situations where you want to play something quick without books or other equipment.